‘‘To me the charm and challenge of life lies in the fusion of the rationality of science and the creativity of art.’’ Coming from someone else, these words might reek of pompousness. But not M M Chaudhri. He might have articulated these words late in life — in the brochure of a 2002 exhibition of his works, to be precise — but he has been living the words through all his 68 years.Chaudhri prefers now to be known as a painter, but his is the academic career that was once the dream of ambitious parents: An MSc in physics from Lucknow University, a doctorate in the same subject from Delhi University, post-doc research with the US Atomic Energy Commission, and eventually, a lecturership at IIT Kanpur.Though he returned from the US to adopt the straight and narrow path, the seeds of change had already been sown. ‘‘I was always interested in the arts. But it was in the US that I took up painting lessons for the first time with an Ames, Iowa-based artist called Annette Epstein. Her first brief to me was: ‘Paint something I can’t recognise.’ Those words have stayed with me.’’Chaudhri says all this in a rush, a harking-back, perhaps, to those heady, liberating days of discovery and opportunity. ‘‘Very quickly, I lost myself to painting in a way I had never did to science. It became a kind of meditation,’’ he says. Simultaneously, he found himself exposed to the best of cinema, music and theatre. None of it counted for extra baggage when he finally came back to India, but it made a world of difference to Chaudhri — and to IIT Kanpur, which he joined as a lecturer in chemistry (his particular area of physical chemistry was the domain of chemistry departments in India). Along with a few colleagues, Chaudhri set up Le Montage, a film society, and a music club. Noticing his enthusiasm for the arts, founder-director of IIT Kanpur P K Kelkar invited him to head the faculty of the Television Centre.In 1970, there was just one television station in India, in New Delhi, but Chaudhri took up the offer and, within months, found himself at FTII, Pune, at the invitation of then principal Jagat Murari. ‘‘Exposed to so much of the best of world cinema, I was inspired to make a film. I got the official go-ahead to make Mass Measurements, a short film on, well, measuring the mass of anything, from the smallest gold bangle at a jeweller’s shop, to that of the earth.’’Through film, therefore, Chaudhri found the perfect way to amalgamate his twin passions, for science and the arts. It also took him further and further away from pure science, and into the nascent arena of educational television, first (as member-head of the department of teaching aids) with the NCERT and then (as director, Consortium for Educational Communication) with the UGC. As his schedule became more and more hectic, though, painting took a backseat, till, while on a Ford Foundation fellowship to London, he joined St Martin’s for an evening course in figure-drawing.It is of late, following deep disillusionment with the governmental apathy for building institutions, ‘‘the foundation blocks of democracy’’, as Chaudhri calls them, and a brief flirtation with private sector television (during which he produced 27 episodes of the Doordarshan programme Turning Point), that the scientist has re-discovered painting. And this time, under the influence of his grandson, he has picked up the brush to experiment with watercolours. In their fluidity, their adaptability and their translucence, perhaps, he seeks all that which is impossible in the real world.
